Oxford Hub’s May Round-up

May has been a busy month for Oxford Hub, with many events focused on building relationships in communities, skilling up changemakers and celebrating our 15th birthday! Keep on reading to see what we’ve been up to this last month.

By Gloria Morey-Picking.

15th-anniversary Exhibition Launch Event

At the end of the month, we held an exhibition to celebrate 15 years of student volunteering — as 2022 marks Oxford Hub’s 15th birthday! We showcased a selection of the fantastic things we have achieved over the past 15 years, most of which wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing work of our student volunteers. There was also artwork inspired by our aim of building a better Oxford, and a glimpse at what is to come in Oxford Hub’s future. It was wonderful to see so many past and present volunteers, staff, friends and family, and those involved in making the exhibition. We continue to develop our work across all communities in the city, and we are excited about the role that students can play alongside residents for a brighter future in Oxford.

Systems Changers Kick-Off

This month, we launched a collaboration between parents and professionals across sectors, to explore the question “how do we holistically support families to thrive in, and with, their community, in order to prevent crises and break cycles of intergenerational disadvantage?”. In practice, this involves learning about systems change and the help currently available for families. We do this because we know the issues that we face are complex, and we want to support parents to collectively imagine a better future where families feel confident asking for help and receive effective support in their communities. We look forward to sharing the outcomes of Systems Changers with you over the next few months!

Connecting students with the city: Social Action Labs

We held two Social Action Labs this month! We were excited to be partnering with the charity Yellow Submarine for our first Lab, a charity which helps people with learning disabilities and autism thrive to live a full and happy life. The Lab took place over the course of 13th to 15th May, focusing on formulating a new campaign to help raise funds for their new location. For the students involved, there were practical workshops alongside team planning in response to the delivered brief. The idea that the students came up with was a sub (sandwich) competition, with the winning sub recipe to be sold in Yellow Sub’s cafés to raise money!

Our second Lab was working alongside OxUnboxed, our fantastic non-profit, low-plastic refill shop. The aim was to make healthy, low-packaged food more accessible in Oxford, by planning how best to redistribute OxUnboxed’s extra stock, and happened over the weekend of 27th to 29th May.

Thanks to everyone who got involved for your ideas and we hope you enjoyed building skills such as teamwork, initiative and creativity!

A very special visit to the Community Impact Zone

The Countess of Wessex, HRH Sophie, paid a visit to the Community Impact Zone collaboration in Blackbird Leys on May 17th. The Countess met with local residents, volunteers, staff, parent advocates from Parent Power and families and volunteers involved in Ready Set Go. The Countess also joined in with the arts and crafts at the Blackbird Leys Adventure Playground where children shared their plans to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee. We were thrilled to host this visit as a great opportunity to say thank you to staff, volunteers, trustees and families working together in the Leys.

Scholar Placements at the Oxford Hub

Over the course of May, we welcomed eleven Crankstart and Lloyds Scholars to help out behind the scenes on the Oxford Hub Placement. These are 14-hour volunteering placements for university students, where they receive training and help out with the inner workings of Oxford Hub. The placements aim to help students develop leadership skills, make a positive change, and help them to kickstart their social action careers.

This month, Scholars have been helping to curate our 15th-anniversary exhibition, create a zine to capture this exhibition, develop our FELLOW programme to reach more learners in the community, and support our internal communications team. It’s been wonderful to see their new, fresh ideas!

Thank you to everybody who has supported us this month; we hope you continue to get involved, and as always just get in touch if you want to connect — email us at hello {@} oxfordhub.org